E.T.S. phone home

This is a little old, but apparently UFO sightings across the UK have experienced phenomenal increases this year. The phenomenon was studied by Strange Phenomenon Investigations, a group who I really, really, really really hope are not Government funded. And note that I squeezed the word "phenomenon" three times into the first paragraph (four including that one) in true UFO-reporting tradition.

A spokesmoonbat from Strange Phenomenon Investigations said of the phenomenon (six now)
"Some experts believe it could be linked to global warming and craft from outer space are appearing because they are concerned about what man is doing to this planet."

O........kay. "Some experts". But should a quasi-scientific thinktank really be consulting Leonard Nimoy, Steven Spielberg and David Duchovny?

Now I'm going to attempt to sound balanced, un-dogmatic, humble and apolitical. Here goes. Even if it's true that human activities are causing catastrophic weather pattern changes (WHICH IT'S NOT) and that destroying capitalism and evil human achievements will stop it (WHICH IT WON'T even if it was true, WHICH IT'S NOT) I am officially incapable of ever believing it. Ever. That's just what happens when truth gets turned into religion. Or when remotely plausible theories are used to embellish theories which are completely insane.



Now if this Strange Phenomenon Investigations group want to make themselves really useful perhaps they can investigate phenomena which is truly baffling and challenging to the human race. Like why do photocopiers break down at the moment of highest urgency. Or why at work, after two hours of absolute quiet, two dozen customers suddenly and simultaneously pile drive their way into my warehouse, elbowing their way through the door all at the same moment, all claiming the same problem. Or why people still believe what they see on MSNBC or CBS and laugh at David Letterman's jokes.

Still, the SPI theories do help to explain one thing, and that is why we keep calling them "little green men". Now, if these, um, experts, are so sure that aliens are concerned about mankind's inhumanity to the planet then we are assume that those impressive flying vehicles of theirs, which by the way are currently cluttering up the amotsphere above Britain, do not emit greenhouse gases. Otherwise that would make them little green hypocrites.

And we have more than enough of those down here.

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Savaging Palin...the Hangover...

The mainstream media has achieved their at-all-costs goal of an Obama victory. So what of the unprecedented savagery unleashed upon the Republican VP pick? What does this bode for the future of journalism, or more importantly, the ability of the average Joe or Joanne to be reasonably well informed?

It does not bode well. Salon.com's Camille Paglia words it more eloquently than I could, and realise this is from a far-left website who hardly have a respectable thing to say about any conservative:

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I could not agree more. The sheer will of the mainstream to veil anything detrimental to the Democrat ticket meant all bets were off, all rulebooks thrown away (if indeed there were any). The lows to which they sunk to sink Palin are now going to be normal. That is frightening.

And then there's this survey, a further insight into the sheer power of the mass media over people's everyday perceptions. This is not intended as a slight on Obama supporters. I will be more than happy to stand corrected should BHO do a sterling job as POTUS. But that's not the point. The point is that this jealously guarded power of the main media cannot keep on like this without doing some serious social harm.





Before we dismiss this as an insignificant or biased snapshot of Obama voters, there was this Zogby poll:

512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points

97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey, a "comedian" Palin impersonator who said that!!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

I repeat: this is not to question the intelligence of Obama supporters. What this survey does is literally track the path of media indoctrination.

Get informed- turn off your TV.

want peace..?

Arab moderates are claiming that a win for Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel's forthcoming elections would actually be a better thing for the region.

Bearing in mind that Netanyahu is considered right-wing and hawkish, yet most economists in the Arab league believe his experience and strength will bring much needed stability because "a stable Israel means a stable region".

Here's the most telling comment, from business owners in Southern Lebanon: "When the wolves smell weakness they attack ... Sadly, when this happens it is Lebanon's economy that pays the heavy price". And this, of the center-left Tzipi Livni: "Livni is weak and inexperienced, and this is too much for our wolves to resist. Netanyahu is not nice, but he is strong, not a pushover. I believe that he is our best chance for quiet."

Read the full article here. Very interesting stuff, that there are moderates in the Arab world who recognise that "tough" and "not nice" can actually bring peace. I wonder if the West will pay any attention.


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Letter from Sderot

This could be any letter from an 18 year old to her grandparents abroad. It's so totally normal.

Except this young lady, writing to her grandparents in the US, lives in Sderot, a little town in southern Israel, close to the border of Gaza. Since Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005, in return for peace, Sderot and the town of Ashkelon have been peppered with Kassam rockets. Over 4,000 fell in one year. They live like this every day. The fear and stress is massive, as well as the economic impact.

This is an innocent, simple little snapshot of living in the valley of the shadow of death.

Hat tip to Israellycool
and The Israel Project for the photos



Dear Granny and Grandpa

I wanted to thank you so much for the beautiful card you sent me for my 18th birthday. I love getting birthday cards from you, they’re always so unique.

I’m really excited this year, I finally feel a little grown up, living in an apartment in Sderot with 7 other girls. I live in a very nice neighborhood with both religious and secular families and a lot of cute kids. (It’s great to earn some extra money babysitting).

As you probably know already, I’m teaching about Judaism to secular kids in kindergartens, elementry schools, junior highs, and in nearby kibbutzim. The job is tiring. We work about 11 hours a day. In the mornings we’re teaching and in the afternoons and nights preparing for our next classes. We’re only four girls in this program, so it’s really hard work, but very enjoyable and satisfying. The girls I’m working with are all fun and very dedicated. Even though it’s only been a couple of months, we’ve been through so much together that it seems like we’ve always known one another. They’re really nice girls (one girl, I discovered, was with me in kindergarden- it was very funny).

We all pitch in to keep the apartment at least a little clean and try hard to eat proper meals, though it’s really hard. For one thing, food is so expensive and we get paid so little. We mostly eat bread and pasta. A lot of pasta. Pasta, past, pasta…

In Sderot itself, we’re all together twenty four girls doing national service. Some girls are counselors in high schools, some are the heads of the youth group that I used to be in, called “B’nei Akiva”. Some are tour guides, some work in soup kitchens. I recently decided to spend some of the little free-time we have, volunteering as a counselor in a youth group for girls called “Ariel”. I’m in charge of about twenty-five screeching little munchkins. It’s weird being a counselor again (remember when I was a counselor in Beer Sheva two years ago for two years, for boys and girls around the same age as these munchkins), but I love kids! and these girls are so sweet!

Sderot is a very special city, not only because it gets bombed so often, but because so many of the people who live there are so amazing. For one thing, they’re always inviting us over for meals, and despite everything they’re going through, the fear for their houses and constant worry for their children – when they’re at school and when they’re at home, the lack of customers at their stores & restaurants, they smile and talk to you on the street. People in Sderot are happy to share what they have. They have this special warmth in them, which helps you have courage.

About the “kassamim”. Technically, there is a cease fire, and before last week only once in a while they still shot a rocket or two just to remind us that they don’t mean it… Last year there were days when sixty rockets would fall. This week the IDF found a tunnel that the terrorists had dug next to the border in order to kidnap and kill more soldiers. When our soldiers went in to destroy the tunnel, there was a battle and they killed six of the terrorists. As revenge, they fired forty rockets towards the settlements around Gaza, including Sderot.

I’ve been in Sderot when a “kassam” fell, but the experience I had the other day was a little different. At four-thirty in the morning the siren that gives us 17 seconds to find shelter went off: A voice on a loudspeaker blaring “tzeva adome” “tzeva adome” (”color red, color red”), telling us that a rocket had just been fired. My friends and I jumped out of our beds and ran to our protective room and shut the door. A second later we realized we had forgotten to wake two of the girls. Somehow they didn’t hear the siren and were still sleeping. We felt so bad that we didn’t wake them, but we all went back to bed thanking G-d that no one was injured from that rocket and that we were all safe.

The next day, at school, we asked the kids how they felt. One little boy answered that he was tired, because like all of us (well, most of us) he woke up in the midle of the night from the siren and couldn’t fall back to sleep. This is how people have been living for the last 7 years! I hope we won’t need to experience anymore of this running and hiding, it’s pretty annoying I can tell you. Unfortunately, everyone knows it is far from over.

I’m so glad I finally found time to write to you. I love you so much and so want to hear about how you’re doing. So, are you happy about Obama’s win?

I miss you. Do you know when you’re coming yet? I can’t wait to see you guys.

Write when you get a chance.

Have a great Shabbat, I love you guys so much!
Tzippora

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"It's over!" (Um...WHAT's over?)

Just as I thought. As per the previous post, maybe the cultural elite, both in the US and here, can stop their righteous whingeing now.

The Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt points out:

John McCain is beaten, and this is what I haven’t yet seen or heard:
Screams that the vote was rigged.
Lawyers taking the result to court.
The loser blaming anyone but himself.
Angry celebrities vowing to move overseas.
Stickers claiming the winner stole the election.
Furious reporters denouncing ads by the losers’ critics.
Furious reporters blaming the winner’s evil genius.
The bitter losers warning the country “is more divided than ever”

No riots either, despite the democrat campaigners' fearmongering and the myth of "republican rage".

Well, okay, give them time. If a republican speaks out of school, I'm sure the mainstream media will have it splashed all over the universe in a nanosecond. Here's how I think most republicans are reacting.

Even more to the point was The Australian's Greg Sheridan, who reckons that maybe instead of idolising Obama, we should also be congratulating America. We know Michelle Obama will, since she was never proud of her country until they nominated her husband as the Democrat Candidate. This election victory marks the point at which Michelle Obama is proud of America for the second time in her life! (Applause).

Anyhow, Greg Sheridan writes:

In a nation supposedly enthralled by fundamentalist religion, the presidential ticket with two mainstream, Protestant, capital-C Christians lost to the ticket with a vice-president of Catholic background who favours abortion on demand, and a presidential candidate who drifted into religion when he drifted into politics and who has one of the most pro-abortion records of any legislator.

The left liberal caricature of America was always nonsense. The militarism of American society is vastly overstated, just as its profound willingness to make sacrifices for other people's freedom is under-appreciated.

Emphasis mine, and it isn't emphatic enough.

There's still political points to score, of course; the Bush Derangement Syndrome will continue. There will still be the hysterical opposition to his conflicts, despite the fact that no US civilian target has suffered a terrorist attack in the last 7 years. The Wall Street Journal have an interesting take on that.

But the real test for Obama will be whether he ceases playing the race and class victim card going forward. I hope he does. Cease, that is.

That leaves only one other problem. If the cultural elite do stop their whingeing about how evil America is...whatever will they do with their time?

UPDATE: Get busy, BHO: Russia have just promised to park offensive missiles right along the border with their western-friendly neighbours, not hours after the election result. When you're all quite finished agreeing with Russia about how it's all Bush's fault, what's the solution?



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Can we stop feeling guilty now?

Okay America, you've finally elected a black president. So can we finally get over this colour thing now? Is it time to drop the hyphenated-American thing and now be called "Americans"?

Believe it or not, racism and class distinction haven't been major issues in the US in recent times. By that I mean there have been no major racial incidents, and no sudden increase in the gap between the lower and middle classes. And yet, these two things have been in the headlines more than ever before during the US Elections. Why?

Because the Obama campaign couldn't exist without it. They stirred it up, brought it up, and rode the wave. Divide and conquer. Agitate the toiling masses with a "them and us" mantra. It's the Alinsky method. The consistency between Obama's past and his 2008 campaign methods form a kind of poetry.

From his days as a "community organiser" with vote fraud enterprise ACORN, relationships with a host of marxist radicals (including convicted murderers), to his election speeches denying those very associations, to his campaign office's boycott and bullying of any groups or individuals daring to mention them, to the messiah-like status adorned on him by an adoring media and pop culture elite, to the $600 million campaign expenditure (dwarfing McCain's $85m)- it all flows together like a perfect plan, straight out of the Alinsky socialist handbook Rules For Radicals.

It's actually quite impressive, almost as if Obama's life has been scripted and coordinated by some hidden power. I'm sure many Christians would agree with me there. The question of "which power?" is where we might differ. Sure, no world leader is placed where they are without God's permission. However that is not to be taken as an endorsement...

Speaking of endorsements, interesting enough was the Obama campaign's last effort to put voters off his opponent McCain. It was a fairly standard "guilt by association" ad, big-noting that McCain was endorsed by the incredibly unpopular Dick Cheney (who also once got into a spot of bother when he accidentally shot a friend in the face. Oops!). Fair enough, worth a try.

I doubt this piece of "guilt by association" had much bearing on the election result. I sincerely hope not. Otherwise, now that Obama is victorious, and working on the naive assumption that his bureaucracy will allow freedom of speech, Americans may yet learn more about who endorses Obama:

US Communist Party
North Korea, rogue state who recently threatened to turn South Korea into "debris"
Columbian Terrorist and Marxist Militia FARC
Terrorist group Hamas, whose foundational charter is the destruction of Israel
The Parliament of Iran, who refer to Israel as "cancer" and constantly call for their destruction
Terrorism sponsor and Libyan Leader Mu'ammar Al-Qadhafi
Syrian President and terrorist sponsor Bashar Assad
Al-Qaeda, an indirect endorsement (they will always hate whoever is in charge of the US!)
The Black Panthers, some of whom attended polling booths to intimidate republican voters
The charming race-baiting, Jew-hating Jeremiah Wright, Obama's only pastor for 20 years

The mainstream media continued to savage and smear Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, portraying her as stupid. They failed to notice that the Obama campaign ordered their VP Joe Biden to keep his mouth shut, lest he say something, well, stupid, as he continually seems to do. So, no media appearances for Joe, while Palin pounded the pavement with press conferences galore, feeding the liberal media savages and their entertainment pals plenty of material for their cheap, depraved mockery.

But before Biden was told to zip it, here was his last gaffe. Gird your loins, he said, for a major international crisis which would "test" the brilliant Obama. He's going to need your support, Biden says, even if it appears as though he's wrong. Just do as we say. Got it. That's sobering.

Now, let's just say this crisis involves one of the groups listed above. The question is, will anyone care? Did the Obama campaign exploit the "victim industry" so successfully that we are all compelled to feel guilty? Are we to accept that the above list of murderers and haters are genuinely and morally permitted to hate us? There is no "guilt by association" on Obama's part, because the guilt is all ours?

Joe Biden wasn't really being stupid (not this time, anyway), just honest. He knows they endorse Obama because Obama has exactly what they want- the promise to acquiesce. They're not stupid, either. If this "international crisis" comes to pass, evil will be coddled, negotiated with, bargained with, empowered, and it will grow. That's not just an opinion. It's history.

By the new President's own admission then, we're in for some interesting times ahead.



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